Colorful shelves, colorful minds.
We believe that books can ignite a magical imagination within everyone.

Our newest subscription program places the transformative power of reading and storytelling on the shelves of young readers. Each month, your middle-grade reader will receive one carefully selected novel representing a piece of our colorful, diverse world in an equally colorful jacket! Whether these books are curled up with in a treehouse hideaway or adding a splash of vibrance to bedroom shelves, they will always start up a magical imagination!

BESO Young Readers is the gift that keeps on giving! The program is perfect

for readers aged 8 - 14, and for gift givers of all ages.

A true love for reading is best fostered early in life, when day dreams still run wild. Think back to when we were in middle school and we devoured novels—in parks, at recess, in the time left in class after we finished a test, on vacation, in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, anywhere we could—like we were running out of time. What we didn’t know was that we were running out of time. Life gets in the way as you grow up. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t replicate the ability to sit down and dive into another world, without any distracting thoughts or time limits, like we did when we were kids. It was amazing, wasn’t it?

Fostering a love for reading in the middle-graders in your life allows us to pass that one-of-a-kind feeling onto someone else—someone whose only worry is if the good guys will win in the end. Start here, with a new book with a unique perspective, a familiar favorite, a piece of history, or a promise that you are not alone from our curated Young Readers collection delivered monthly. Here are some of the fascinating titles on our lineup:

 

Hello, Universe - Erin Estrada Kelly

When a shy and quiet Filipino-American 6th grader, Virgil, needs inner strength and unlikely allies to recover from a harrowing encounter with the school bully, a beautiful, exciting tale of friendship, diversity, and resilience unfolds. Readers will discover a cast of unique, and often very funny, characters and their personal struggles as timid Virgil, deaf Valencia, psychic Kaori and her sister, Gen, bond over shared experiences when one of them is in dire need.

Nathan thinks spending the summer with his grandmother on the Navajo reservation will be boring without WiFi, but he quickly changes his mind after his uncle arrives for a surprise stay. One night, Nathan gets lost wandering in the desert and encounters a Holy Being, the Water Monster, in need of his help. Come along with him as he seeks the help of animals and other Holy Beings to save the Water Monster and his troubled uncle who is struggling with war-related PTSD.

When young Nobody Owens wandered into a spooky graveyard, he had no idea his family was being murdered by a mysterious killer back at his house. Newly orphaned, he is adopted as Bod by the spirits and monsters that inhabit the graveyard. His new family promises the living boy, “The best education the dead can offer,” and accompany him on his adventures between the living world, the dead one, and even more terrifying places. Unbeknownst to Bod, the killer’s work is unfinished, and in between each adventure, he draws closer to the last surviving member of the Owens family.

In everyone’s favorite tearjerker, Jess becomes fast friends with the newest student to the 5th grade, Leslie, when she beats him in a race he was sure he would win. The two become close as they spend nearly every day playing in an imaginary land, Terabithia, in the woods behind Leslie’s house. Their lives as Terabithians are filled with adventure, magic, and wonder. Until, one day, a tragedy befalls the land. Bridge to Terabithia breaches some tough topics to discuss with children, but it also shows them how personal strength and a loving family can help them through difficult times.

Set in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression, Cassie Logan, a 9-year-old black girl, learns about racism from first hand experience. The story follows Cassie as she finds her voice, helps her family with the struggling farm, learns about their connection to the land, and confronts the reality of the cruel circumstances they have to survive in. This story is important for young readers to hear as an uncomfortable reality of America’s history, but it’s also an incredible example of standing tall and courageous in the face of adversity, no matter how scary it gets.

Amina is a Pakistani-American Muslim girl who struggles with her cultural identity as religious obligations pile up on top of a fading friendship with a Korean boy, Soojin, who is changing his name to be something ‘more American’ and leaving her behind, as they don’t have otherness in common anymore. Now alone at school, her dream to show others her talented singing voice had to be temporarily put aside. Should she follow in Soojin’s footsteps, and embrace a new identity as just an American Girl? Or should she keep important traditions from her family alive?

Two neighbor girls who have always been at odds, Valentina and Oksana, wake up on the morning of April 26th, 1986, in Kiev, Ukraine, they must flee the Chernobyl Disaster’s nuclear fallout to Leningrad and stay with Valentina’s grandmother, Rita. This storyline is told parallel to the grandmother’s story of fleeing for her life as a girl, but instead of radiation, she fled Germans and Russians as both groups were persecuting Jewish people. In both timelines, the young girls struggle with finding trust and hope in the wake of devastating circumstances.

In the summer before middle school, Bug and their best friend, Moira, spend their time together at Bug’s quietly haunted house preparing, mentally and physically, for moving on to big kid school. Moira wants to play dress-up to plan outfits, learn how to do makeup, and talk about cute boys, but Bug is disinterested, and sometimes revolted, by those things. They don’t understand why none of it feels right and why they can’t just be more like Moira. When a new ghost arrives at their house and starts disturbing the peace, Bug must get to the bottom of who they are and what they want, all while struggling with their own identity.

 

Sisters Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are in for a world of surprises when their father decides they need to spend some time with their estranged mother on the other side of the country. Met with someone antithetical to what they thought their mother would be like, the girls begin to understand why she isn’t in their lives. Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents. Too consumed with her poetry work to care about the visit, the mother, Cecile, sends the girls to a daycare in Black Panther-occupied Oakland. At first, they are frightened and confused by all the guns and police, but through their time with the Black Panthers, they discover the importance of their identity, find their voices, and become advocates for the safety of minority communities.